News

Thousands of children do not own a single book

Almost 400,000 children in the UK do not have a single book of their own, new research suggests.

It means they are missing out on many proven benefits of book ownership, including improved reading skills, reading enjoyment and mental wellbeing.

The study involved 57,000 children aged from nine to 18 and has been undertaken by the National Literacy Trust (NLT).

It found that 6.3 per cent did would equate to 383,775 young people across the UK.

However, disadvantaged children are more likely to be among those without a book to their name. When broken down by free school meals, the figures show that 9.3 per cent of FSM children do not own a book compared to six per cent of non-FSM children. This gap has halved during the past six years.

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